Cooperation and development
If you want to learn more about Green Economy investment in the Mediterranean, join this experience-sharing webinar organised as part of the Interreg MED Green Growth Community project. The session will take place online on 20 May 2021. Don't miss it!
The new Circular Economy Action Plan identifies textiles as a key product value chain with potential to boost the EU market for sustainable and circular textiles. The European Commission is organising a series of targeted stakeholder workshops to gather input on challenges and gaps as well as opportunities for the sector towards sustainability. Join the second workshop on 2 June 2021!
EU Green Week 2021 has chosen to focus on Zero Pollution for healthier people and planet. You are welcome to joint the virtual High Level Conference taking place on 1-4 June.
Reducing pollution goes hand in hand with achieving our climate neutrality and biodiversity objectives and will help to transform the EU into a clean and circular economy.
"Innovative Business Practices and Economic Models in the Textile Value Chain" (InTex) is a three-year UNEP project funded by the European Union. The InTex project has five components, two with global reach and three focusing on national implementation in three African countries: Kenya, South Africa and Tunisia.
CIRAA is a company active in promoting circular economy principles and helping businesses ensure that their plans and projects abide by those principles.
A new partnership led by the UNIDO is looking for interested organisations to express their interest in joining ‘SWITCH to Circular Economy Value Chains’ - a five-year European Union-funded project that aims to accelerate the transition to more circular value chains (namely textiles and garments, and plastic packaging) in developing countries.
Commissioned by the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP), which advises the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and co-authored by Circle Economy and Shifting Paradigms, this report uncovers the range of socio-economic and environmental co-benefits that circular mitigation interventions can bring to GEF countries of operation.
The report supports strategic advice by the STAP to the GEF and its implementing partners, and helps carve out a role for these bodies in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon circular economy. Its findings will be highly relevant to the development of future GEF projects and programmes across its different focal areas.
The Re-Use conference on 19 May will focus on the shift towards the circular economy in the textile sector. There will be exciting contributions on textiles and the circular economy from speakers such as Dr Willi Haas. The conference will be accompanied by the Theater im Bahnhof. Please note that the conference will be in German!
The Italian project BIOCOSI (BIOdegradable and COmpostable packaging for sustainable, circular and smart industry) has come up with a revolutionary solution to the problem of wastewater in the dairy sector.
The Horizon 2020 project SUSTAINair was launched recently. It aims to research and develop solutions to increase resource efficiency and aircraft performance while cutting down on waste and material costs throughout the aircraft life cycle - what is known as "circular aviation".
SUSTAINair is an H2020-funded platform developing circular economy principles for the aviation and aerospace design, manufacturing, operations and end-of-life phases. This EU-funded research project aims to make the entire supply chain ecosystem greener, in line with the Circular Economy Action Plan, and to set new standards for aerospace manufacturing, enabling an increase in cross-sector synergies.
The SUSTAINair project provides the aviation sector with a path to a more cost-effective, low-carbon economy, while tackling the increase in resource consumption, waste and emissions. Because of this, the SUSTAINair project has been endorsed by the Future Sky research initiative of the Association of European Research Establishments in Aeronautics (EREA).
Circular Innovation Lab invites you to the launch event for ShopC - the first ever marketplace for circular fashion & lifestyle. Circular Innovation Lab has invited an exciting panel of participants – representatives of international organisations and fashion brands and circular economy experts – exploring topics such as sustainability, innovation and circular fashion & lifestyle.
The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra is a future fund collaborating with partners to research, trial and implement bold ideas that shape the future. It aims to make Finland a pioneer in sustainable well-being.
Since 2015, Sitra has been working to lead the way to a circular economy – a new kind of society in which everyday lives and well-being are no longer based on excessive consumption and fossil fuel use.
Currently, Sitra’s work focuses on supporting a fair transition to a circular economy and investigating how business can be based on sharing instead of ownership. Sitra is also working to advance circular trade policies, to increase the understanding of environmental effects of digitisation and to explore the potential of the circular economy to safeguard biodiversity.
Over the last 2 and a half years, CICERONE has worked closely with over 100 stakeholders, primarily programme owners, to build more alignment for circular economy programming and funding in Europe. The event on 30 March is an excellent opportunity to hear the partners present some of the project's results and experience first-hand the launch of the new EU Circular Cooperation Hub.
The report on Sustainable Plastics Strategy was prepared by the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry (SusChem) and its partners: Cefic, PlasticsEurope, European Plastics Converters (EuPC) and the European Composites, Plastics and Polymer Processing Platform (ECP4).
One of the keys to tackling plastic waste is the creation of a circular economy. However, the circular economy for plastics is not just about waste. Eliminating leakage and stepping up the use of secondary materials may be part of the picture, but the transition to renewable inputs completes it.
This report outlines the future research needed to fulfil the objectives of the European Strategy for Plastics and the Green Deal priorities.
This COSME project aims to implement a capacity building and support scheme for SMEs in the tourism sector that will lead them to reach different levels of Circular Economy innovations within a transition system.
Data palms are becoming ever more important globally and in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa). The Khalifa Award Report, inspired by 46 contributors in 21 countries, focuses on the 5 Ps - People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnerships - which shape the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The bio-circular economic potential of the date palm industry has yet to be explored. In some cases, it is a necessity that can save lives in oases prone to fire hazards caused by climate change; it can also provide new green jobs in the sustainable economy transition. The European circular economy transition can serve as a model for adaptation in the MENA region.
More info on date palm recycling on pages 162-3 of the report.
The Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP) is an international, non-profit think-and-do tank. Together with companies, political organisations and civil society actors, the CSCP pursues its mission to mainstream sustainability towards the good life for all.
From H2020 projects (R2Pi, Scalibur, Refresh and Spread), to CE Missions to Japan and Mexico, to launching the Consumer Insight Action Panel with the European Economic and Social Committee, co-developing the European Circular Cities Declaration or designing and running the Academy of Change – a unique capacity building programme that can be replicated across various topics - the CSCP integrates multiple stakeholders and various perspectives to help implement a systemic transition towards circularity.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has set out five universal circular economy policy goals that provide a framework for national governments, cities and businesses to create a transition that fosters innovation and decouples growth from finite resource consumption and environmental degradation.
Rijkswaterstaat has the ambition to make its infrastructure works fully climate-neutral by 2030 and to operate in a fully circular manner. A great ambition that it cannot achieve on its own. That is why Rijkswaterstaat invite you to participate in a number of online sessions (in DUTCH only) from 2 to 4 February and to work together on a circular and climate-neutral infrastructure.
What steps has the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management Rijkswaterstaat taken in the field of circularity in 2019? You can read everything in this annual report, intended for colleagues, other government agencies, research centres or private parties.
New in this report is the focus on climate neutrality, i.e. the ambition to have zero impact on the climate in all Rijkswaterstaat's work – including that of its contractors. It wants to work in a circular and climate-neutral way by 2030. Both ambitions reinforce each other.
More high-quality recycling of materials, an important principle of the circular economy, means less CO2 emissions and therefore less impact on the climate. On the other hand, working on climate neutrality stimulates the circular transition.
The Remanufacturing platform is designed to help with the development of remanufacturing activities. It provides resources and reflection on remanufacturing and the circular economy.
Set up in 2014, Remanufacturing aims to promote remanufacturing and associated RE-activities for product life extension. Within circular economy value recovery cycles, products can be REused, REpaired, REnovated, REmanufactured or REcycled. The aim is to reuse end-of-life products and components in new or upgraded products.
Remanufacturing has created a website describing the advantages of and barriers to starting up and developing remanufacturing activities, with examples and methodologies.
The European REFUCOAT project developed innovative, efficient, bioplastic food packaging production processes using renewable, recyclable materials which could replace conventional fossil fuel-based raw materials. Three different bio-based active packaging systems were developed.
European consumers lack the means to improve the durability of their products. In addition to harming the environment by emitting CO2, extracting non-renewable resources unnecessarily and creating waste, premature obsolescence in all its forms affects citizens’ purchasing power, their right to repair and their freedom to make their products last longer.
This white paper aims to give all stakeholders suggestions and ideas to move towards a world in which repair and responsible consumption are the norm. This will necessarily imply new constraints on manufacturers, that can no longer make products without taking durability and repair into account. It will also require new tools to inform citizens so that they are empowered in their consumption choices.
Different types of waste have been successfully co-processed as alternative fuels and raw materials (AFR) in cement kilns in Europe, Japan, USA, Canada and Australia since the beginning of the 1980s.
In 2006, the first edition of the GTZ-Holcim Guidelines on Co-processing Waste Materials in Cement Production was published (GIZ-Holcim, 2006), aiming to gather the lessons of these experiences and offer it particularly to low and middle income countries as an option to improve approaches to waste management. Since then, waste management has earned a much more prominent place on the political agenda.
This revised edition of the guidelines updates technical, institutional, legal and social aspects of the original document as well as incorporate new ideas and information.
